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Akcea (AKCA) to Report Q2 Earnings: What's in the Offing?

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Akcea Therapeutics, Inc.  is scheduled to report second-quarter results on Aug 4.

Akcea’s stock has lost 29% in the year so far against the industry's growth of 5%.

 

The company beat earnings expectations by 6.67% in the last reported quarter. Over the trailing four quarters, it surpassed earnings estimates on two occasions and missed in the other two, the average negative surprise being 4.87%.

Let us see how things have shaped up prior to this announcement.

Factors in Focus

Akcea, a majority-owned affiliate of Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (IONS - Free Report) , is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company, which focuses on developing and commercializing medicines to treat patients with serious and rare diseases.

The company is commercializing Tegsedi (inotersen) and Waylivra (volanesorsen), and hence the key focus will be on the performance of these two drugs.

Tegsedi is approved to treat adults with the polyneuropathy caused by hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis, or hATTR amyloidosis, and has been approved and launched in the United States and Europe. Waylivra is indicated as an adjunct to diet to treat adult patients with genetically confirmed familial chylomicronemia syndrome (FCS), who are at high risk for pancreatitis, for whom response to diet and triglyceride-lowering therapy has been inadequate. It has been approved and launched in the EU.

The company generated sales $15 million in the first quarter from these two drugs and the trend most likely continued in the second quarter. The launch of Tegsedi in additional EU countries is likely to have resulted in incremental sales in the second quarter.

However, the ongoing pandemic is likely to have impacted sales adversely as patients delayed normal visits to physicians.

Additionally, the company has a deep pipeline, which comprises APO(a)-LRx, vupanorsen (AKCEA-ANGPTL3-LRx), AKCEA-APOCIII-LRx and AKCEA-TTR-LRx for multiple diseases. Investors will be awaiting key updates on these candidates.

Akcea had also planned to refile its New Drug Application for Waylivra with the FDA this year and progress on the same will be keenly awaited by the investors when it reports results.

Earnings Whispers

Our proven model does not conclusively predict an earnings beat for Akcea this time around. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the odds of an earnings beat. Unfortunately, that is not the case here, as you will see below. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they're reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Earnings ESP: Earnings ESP for Akcea is 0.00%.

Zacks Rank: The company currently carries a Zacks Rank #3.

Stocks to Consider

Here are a few stocks you may want to consider, as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this quarter.

Translate Bio (TBIO - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +7.69% and a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

uniQure (QURE - Free Report) has an Earnings ESP of +60.69% and a Zacks Rank #2.

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